T-SQL Tuesday #54 – An Interview Invitation

T-SQL Tuesday is a recurring blog party, that is started by Adam Machanic (Blog | @AdamMachanic). Each month a blog will host the party, and everyone that want’s to can write a blog about a specific subject.

This month the subject is “An Interview Invitation “. If you want to read the opening post, please click the image below to go to the party-starter: Boris Hristov (Blog | @BorisHristov).

This months topic is about job interviews. Looking back, I can say I had a few interview over the last few years. Not only to get myself at a company, but also to hire new employees for the companies I worked for. Both types of conversations can be very interesting, or get on your nerves very quickly. I’ve seen both…

Hiring people
When you work for a company, and you hire new people, you want to make sure you’re talking to the right type of people. Whether or not I’m hiring you, isn’t just bases on technical skills. The way I see it is that technical skills is mostly build from experience and insight, and knowledge can be build up by reading a book, watching a video, or talking to and learning from other people with a similar skill set. The thing I’m personally looking at in the interview is personality, passion for what a person does, and what he or she wants to achieve in the next few years. That will tell you something about the person. I’m not saying the technical skills aren’t that important, but it’s not the only thing I look for. One of the last companies I worked for looks for people they want to drink a beer with on a Friday night. So again, the personality is in some cases as important as technical skills.

Interviewing people
Talking to other database professionals can be either very interesting, or very frustrating. One of the interviews I had in the past few years, was to hire a new colleague for a project I was working on. His resume looked good, he had a few years experience on equal projects, and I thought he would make a good addition to the team. When I started the interview, he seemed to be a little nervous. I tried to make him feel a little more comfortable, by asking him about his experience, past projects, and personal life. When he calmed down, we slowly moved the conversation to his technical skills.

Talking about the project, I started to notice he wasn’t giving me the answer I would’ve expected from someone with his experience. Okay, maybe he misunderstood the project. We moved on to common issues we all ran into when working on projects. Every question was answered by “it depends…”, and “I’ve read that…”. Okay, that’s no good. Theoretical knowledge isn’t what I expected. And not long after that, I ended the interview. If you’re too scared to even make a theoretical decision, and defend that point of view, I don’t want you to work on my environment. That shows me that if you make a mistake, and that can happened to even the most experienced employee, you won’t have the guts to tell me you did something wrong. And I want you to tell me that, so we can solve it together, and learn from it.

Another interview I had with a database professional, turned out to be a dull conversation. The person came in to apply for a senior function, and he definitely had the experience for it. His personality was good, and would fit the team perfectly. But every answer we asked him, he answered with a lot of needless words, that ended up in a best-practice answer. The reason I didn’t want to hire him, was his lack of creativity. If you’re spilling answers you read on the internet, or in books, it shows me you’re probably not creative enough to solve the problems you’re encountering. If you’re in a stressful situation, and you need to read a book to think of a solution to the problem, you’re probably not the DBA I’m looking for.

Being interviewed
One of the most interesting interviews I had in the last few years, was one of my last job interviews. The first interview went well, where we talked about the company, the team, etc. The IT manager and team leader wanted to talk to me a second time, and that was the most interesting interview I had until now.

The interview started out nice. I talked to the team leader again, and another team member joined the interview. We had a good conversation about technical stuff, the team, projects, etc. When we were approaching the end of the interview, the most interesting part started. I knew the company worked with a consultant company from England, and that the lead consultant visited the office every few weeks. Big surprise, he was there that day. So the moment he walked in, I started to struggle. I needed to switch from my native language Dutch to English, and started an interview with an MCM and MVP. This made me even more nervous, and because of that I stared to doubt every answer I gave. But in the end, I did a reasonable job apparently, because the company hired me. Now I see him every month, and we have some good conversations, even though I’m still afraid to ask him a question sometimes, worrying I’m just asking a dumb question.

Maybe the most annoying person is the perfect candidate…
Thinking about hiring a new colleague, you might end up with a pretty big dilemma. The person you want to hire because of his personality, might not be the best choice. The one with the best technical skills might be a better fit, but you don’t like him at all. So when looking for a new colleague or team member, you might end up wondering what’s best for the company, and set your own feelings aside. But when you do, it’s always a gamble with new people. At first, the new colleague had perfect technical skills and was very nice, but in the end his skills aren’t that good or his personality is slightly different than you thought. Hiring people is still a combination of asking the right questions and a gut feeling.